Print
Hits: 14544

“The further the society drifts from TRUTH, the more it will hate those that speak it.” – George Orwell

When I started penning this article, I did not realize how perceptions can turn out by my thoughts on this God worship wantons. I am toying with the idea that true believers will not agree with my wanting to be talking about their wondrous creator up in the sky. I do know that believers will draw their daggers to strike off my head, as my thoughts are not to their likings. But I’m unable to undo it without fracturing the lines of thought itself! As Friedrich Nietzsche rightly said, “All things are subject to interpretations; whichever interpretations prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth”.

Consequently, I have to put all of my curious judgements into perspectives and I request your immoderation.

god-in-the-sky

For God to be an all-knowing, all-powerful Sky-Dude that almost no one truly believes in, I'm given to understand (from all the polls) that this World is full of religious folks (around 70%) and that Atheists, Buddhists and Communists are a small minority. I would, however, like to posit that most people DO NOT actually ever believe in God, although they sincerely profess to one faith or another? And that’s what I’d like to explore in this article.

So, let’s start! I doubt any sane person actually believes in God? Not you, or your spouse, or not even your parents/grandparents, or your devout cousin, who is also a Mullah. And for that matter, not even the Grand Mufti ever believes in God!

Well what is God?

I think most people know what I mean by God. But, I am forced to clarify it, because some folks have adopted a weasel-ass Deepak Chopra-esque techniques of disguising this very God as some nameless, faceless energy-field that is infused in our wireless mind communiqué biology and saturates our all consciousness with virtue and mystic beauty… blah blah blah.

Just Pure Nonsense! No matter how well the faithful try to deflect scrutiny, the God they are droning on about is the same one that is most widely perceived as an omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient entity that made this universe and all that is in it. And that this God has prescribed some virtues and forbidden some vices; and that He has a keen sense of justice, whilst listens to those prayers of the faithful and that He intercedes on behalf of those as worthy. THAT is the GOD I’m talking about irrespective of the name ascribed to Him or the quantified holy Book that is brandished as His ascribed publication!

So what is this “Belief”?

Since there is no handy tool to measure and ascertain religious beliefs, we usually take a lay person’s word as the final arbiter of truth. In fact, societal norms of politeness dictate that such statements are beyond scrutiny, because it would trespass on the individual’s domain of private thoughts and assumptions! As a result, any statement that is prefixed with “I believe” builds a moat around itself, which fends off any inquiry – let alone challenges? Moreover, I submit to you that this is how we get a whopping figure of 70% peoples saying that they believe in a true God!

And how about verifying this “Belief”?

So let’s consider what would happen if the subject of “belief” were different? For instance, what would happen if someone were to say that he/she “believed” that their bank were about to go under? Or that the stock market was about to collapse? For us to be persuaded that they ‘actually believe’ in what they say they believe to be the truth, would we not expect their conduct to reflect that belief? Would we not expect that person to withdraw all deposits or sell existing holdings if he/she truly believed that those investments were about to tank? Or would we just simply accept their claims to belief if their conduct were inconsistent with those stated beliefs?

(NOTE: It is possible to be mistaken in one’s belief. In other words, it is also possible to believe that the stock market will crash even though it really does not. But if one were to truly believe it, one’s actions would definitely bear testimony to such a belief). However, this is NOT the case with religious beliefs. When a person says, he/she believes in God –that is taken purely at face-value even though his/her actions are incongruent with the stated belief. And that we seem to have convinced ourselves that “religious belief” is so sacrosanct that it ought not to be verified and thus the chasm between stated belief and actual actions remains un-bridged.

To summon up on this vice versa ambiguity of True Belief in God, I would like to state a valid example of unbridled lies of holistic scriptural writings from God’s righteous words written in holy books [Bible and Qur’an]

We would like to draw your attention to the following substantiated scriptures:

The Holy Bible, which the Quran admits that it is authentic, and that it's kept by God, says: "It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the law" [Luke 16:17], which means that the word of God in the Old Testament cannot be changed. It is also mentioned that Jesus Christ says about his word: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" [Mathew 24:35]. As you see here that Jesus Christ describes his word as eternal, this is not applicable except for God Himself. It means that the word of Jesus Christ in the New Testament can never ever be changed as well!

This is the belief of Christians in the word of the Holy Bible, with its two Testaments, which no creature on earth could change or falsify. That is because it is supposedly the true words of God, and the holy Qur’an itself confirms this belief.

Hence, if someone comes some 600 years after the descent (incarnation) of Jesus Christ, which is the most glorious incident in the history of humanity, and this person wants to change the events of the history, or some of the teachings of the Holy Bible, or to interpret it in a different way other than what Jesus Christ taught. This person has to get the proof for what he says, especially if it were not coinciding with the recorded history over the years. On the other hand, this leads us to the next point: the amiable holy Qur’an came without any evidence that proves its credibility? In spite of its promise that God will send miracles to prove it, up till now this promise has not ever been fulfilled, not even by one single miracle? Humanity waited a long time for this miracle, but nothing came out. That pushed the famous Islamic university, Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, to declare that Islam is the religion of the reason, and that there are no miracles in Islam but the holy Qur’an itself, which is the wholly Islamic miracle, and the only proof of Islam's authenticity! Since then, we hear a lot of sayings that claim that the holy Qur’an predicted some of the recent scientific discoveries, even when these discoveries are to be proved wrong later. For instance, when it was discovered that the atom was indivisible, and then when it was proved divisible -- in both cases, it was said to be a miracle of the holy Quran.

Nowadays you're coming up with the idea of 'letter measuring'. This is an old Jewish thought.  It is a mistrusted unofficial procedure, and it cannot be scientifically proven. Although you call the Jews infidels, you still follow their barren ways? You're still trying to prove the credibility of the Qur’an from the Qur’an itself? Here, Al Azhar and Muslims missed a very important point, which is: any book needs proofs from the outside for it to prove itself as authentic! That's only logical, since every witness needs a judge to judge his/her blessed testimony, or else the whole case is spoilt to falsity.

However, all Muslims claim to believe in all the revelations that God has sent, not making barren distinctions between any of them. Yet, in practice though, what do we see? We see many believers following only one Book, while the others are ignored, unread, and even rejected on the basis of it being corrupted, illegitimate and man-made traditions, or that God has simply pledged to re-new His blessed wordings with newer and better versions of His statements of Belief and Commandments of Truths!


 

Read Part 2